Blood Lactate Concentrations Before and After Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Treatments in Controlled Donation After Circulatory Death: A Case Report From Italy.

A 20-minute hands-off period with isoelectric electrocardiography (ECG) monitoring is currently required for the declaration of cardiac death in Italy, thus prolonging the warm ischemia time (WIT) during donation after circulatory death (DCD). Normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) can be a valid tool to optimize organ perfusion as a bridge to donation. A 62-year-old woman with catastrophic brain injury due to massive intracranial hemorrage, not fulfilling brain death criteria, underwent controlled DCD after withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies (WLST). NRP was established after a functional WIT of 43 minutes. Despite concerns regarding a prolonged WIT imposed by the national legislation on declaration of cardiac death, NRP was successful in restoring an adequate perfusion to liver and kidneys, as evidenced by a sustained reduction in blood lactate concentration. Liver and kidneys were successfully transplanted after ex vivo machine perfusion.

Hospital health professionals' education about organ and tissue donation: a Turin hospital experience.

The culture of organ and tissue donation is not particularly well established among the general population, who often receive incorrect, incomplete information. Unfortunately, even among health workers not directly involved in the field of transplantation (laypersons), there is a poor level of knowledge concerning the underlying principles, mechanisms, and results. To increase lay health workers' knowledge and awareness of the importance of donation and transplantation, we organized an educational session for (nurses, doctors, healthcare workers, technicians, and other professionals) at a hospital coordinating service in Turin. The project was divided into 3 phases: first (February 2010), we performed an initial survey using an instrument containing 18 questions. We sought to assess the level of awareness of hospital personnel. Among 880 distributed questionnaires, 346 were compiled and returned to the authors (39.31%). During the second phase, covering the following 24 months, we held 15 educational courses on the subject of transplantation for 483 participants. In the third and last phase (February 2012), we performed a second survey, distributing, 785 questionnaires identical to the previous one, among which 404 were compiled and returned (51.46%).

[NMR in the diagnosis and treatment of neurologic lesions in decompression sickness]. / Contributo della RMN alla conoscenza ed al trattamento delle lesioni neurologiche da MDD.

The case of a decompression sickness in woman, diving to 26 meter depth is reported. The patient was helped by instructor's computer (error!) and she presented risk factors for embolic disease (obesity, smoke, estroprogestinic therapy). She presented with many symptoms of decompression sickness during immersion and during re-ascent (headache, vertigoes and paresthesias). She was not treated on the place of incident, but only 36 hours later at our center of hyperbaric medicine. Her Magnetic Resonance imaging showed hyperintensity lesions of white matter.

Short communication: Influence of inoculum preparation on citric acid production by Aspergillus niger.

The type of sporulation medium and time of incubation had an effect on spore viability and citric acid production by mycelia grown from Aspergillus niger spores. Shu & Johnson agar (SJA) and potato dextrose agar gave higher citric acid titres than malt-extract agar. SJA also gave better germinability than the other media. Viability increased with time of incubation, but higher production of citric acid was achieved with spores incubated for less than 7 days.